Butter dishes are well known containers for sticks or blocks of butter. Typically, the butter dish includes a dish or plate for supporting the butter and a removable cover that is lifted off the dish to provide access to the butter. Several problems exist with such butter dishes including close spacing between the cover and the butter and handling of the cover once it is lifted off the plate. The close spacing means that the cover often comes into contact with the butter when moving away from the dish and/or when the cover is returned to the plate. This translates to greasy butter being deposited on the cover and then transferred to the region between the cover and the plate when the two are brought together again. Having butter between the cover and the plate ruins the quality of the seal of the cover to the plate.
Greasy butter may also be transferred to the countertop or table where the cover is set down during the process of removing a pat of butter and applying the butter to another item, such as a slice of bread. To avoid leaving greasy butter on a countertop a user often attempts to set the cover upside down on the countertop, but this is often difficult because a handle for the cover may be on top of the cover so that the cover is not stable and may fall to the floor and break; also handling of the cover is difficult because it is difficult to grab an upside down cover.
Another problem is that butter left between the cover and the plate softens if left at room temperature but will then fuse the cover to the plate when placed in a refrigerator. When next used the cover will be difficult to open or remove and may even be dangerous as a consumer struggles with the cover.
Another type of butter dish, one with a hinged or roll top, tends to be somewhat complicated structurally and limiting in that such dishes only open to 90° and thus they constrict access to the butter by a user using a butter spreader. With such a restricted opening butter may accidently be smeared on the closure, the lip of a glass plate or of a stand.
Patents have been granted over the years on butter dishes, such as U.S. Pat. No. D259,690 issued in 1981 to Buchsteiner for a design of a “Dish With Hinged Cover.” The Buchsteiner patent purports to disclose a base, a curved back wall and a matching curved cover hinged to only open to 90°. Another such patent was granted to Schwartz, U.S. Pat. No. D192,870 issued in 1962 purporting to show a dish and a removable cover.
The invention described below in detail addresses these and other deficiencies of the prior art. The features and advantages of the present invention will be explained in, or become apparent from, the following summary and description of the preferred embodiment considered together with the accompanying drawings.